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PROGRAM D-8049
Do you find yourself frequently wishing you were someone else? Do you often feel that a different personality would be much better than the one you have? Well, if that’s true, then not only are you prevented from knowing and appreciating the uniqueness of who you are as created by God, but you are kept from being able to appreciate others as well.
I know that as I’ve begun to accept that who I am is not a mistake but rather a plan in God’s eternal purpose, I am able to look at other people with a much-changed attitude. Those who are very different from me no longer present a threat or cause me to feel inadequate or short-changed. When I see people whose personalities and gifts I admire, I can now enjoy them for who they are. I don’t have to compete with them or feel jealous or envious of them, because I know that they are unique for God’s purposes and so am I.
Can you see what freedom and happiness can be brought into your life when you are able to appreciate who you are? You are free from that foreboding sense that something is wrong with you; you are free not to have to think or worry about yourself all the time; you are free to be involved with others; you are free from the pain of jealousy and envy, and the dreariness of self-pity.
When you can accept that you were created by God just the way you are for his good purposes, you’re also able to understand that God has made us all very different for good reasons. Sometimes we subconsciously think that everybody should be like us—think like us, feel like us, and see everything the way we do. But that’s not how God has created us.
I’m reminded that it would not have been good if everyone were created just like me. If we were all alike there would be no balance, and it would be pretty miserable, not to mention boring. God is so incredibly creative that it is no problem at all for him to design each of us as unique people—no two of us alike. How wonderful, how marvelous!
Will you, starting today, ask God to help you appreciate who you are? Will you ask him to set you free from trying to be someone else? Will you start consciously thanking God that you are who you are, and commit to him that you want to be all he has planned for you to be? That’s the way to have a contented and fruitful life.